SSW 07.20.16

Ode to the City is a grassroots arts initiative bringing free, public art workshops to Chicago’s near South Side. every other Monday

Tuesday evenings

Thursday afternoons

Saturday afternoons

Visual Arts

Poetry

Mixed Media

Mixed Media

6:00–8:00 PM

6:00–8:00 PM

@ Arts Incubator 301 e garfield blvd. chicago, il, 60637

@ BING Art Books 307 e garfield blvd. chicago, il, 60637

1:00–4:00 PM

@ DuSable Museum 740 e 56th pl. chicago, il, 60637

1:00–3:00 PM

@ Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative 1450 e 70th st. chicago, il, 60619

our teaching artists include

Jamila Woods * Nate Marshall * Fatimah Asghar Kevin Coval * Jasmine Barber * Avery R. Young workshops run through august 30

for our full calendar and more information, visit

odetothecity.org Ode to the City @odetothecity_chi 2 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

all ages all skill levels free entrance free materials provided free professional instruction

SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY The South Side Weekly is an independent nonprofit newsprint magazine written for and about neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago. We publish in-depth coverage of the arts and issues of public interest alongside oral histories, poetry, fiction, interviews, and artwork from local photographers and illustrators. The South Side Weekly is dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side and to providing educational opportunities for developing journalists, writers, and artists.

Editor-in-Chief Jake Bittle Managing Editors Maha Ahmed, Christian Belanger Director of Staff Management Ellie Mejia Director of Writer Development Mari Cohen Deputy Editor Olivia Stovicek Senior Editor Emeline Posner Education Editor Lit Editor Music Editor Stage & Screen Editor Visual Arts Editor

Hafsa Razi Sarah Claypoole Austin Brown Julia Aizuss Corinne Butta

Contributing Editors Joe Andrews, Eleonora Edreva, Andrew Koski,

Lewis Page, Sammie Spector, Carrie Smith Editors-at-Large Mari Cohen, Ellie Mejia Video Editor Lucia Ahrensdorf Radio Producer Maira Khwaja Social Media Editors Sierra Cheatham, Emily Lipstein, Sam Stecklow Visuals Editor Ellen Hao Layout Editors Baci Weiler Sofia Wyetzner Staff Writers: Olivia Adams, Maddie Anderson, Sara Cohen, Christopher Good, Anne Li, Emiliano Burr di Mauro, Zoe Makoul, Sonia Schlesinger, Darren Wan Staff Photographers: Juliet Eldred, Finn Jubak, Alexander Pizzirani, Julie Wu Staff Illustrators: Javier Suarez, Addie Barron, Jean Cochrane, Lexi Drexelius, Wei Yi Ow, Amber Sollenberger, Teddy Watler, Julie Wu, Zelda Galewsky, Seonhyung Kim Editorial Interns

Gozie Nwachukwu, Kezie Nwachukwu, Bilal Othman

Webmasters Alex Mueller, Sofia Wyetzner Publisher Harry Backlund The paper is produced by an all-volunteer editorial staff and seeks contributions from across the city. We distribute each Wednesday in the fall, winter, and spring, with breaks during April and December. Over the summer we publish monthly.

Send submissions, story ideas, comments, or questions to editor@southsideweekly.com or mail to: South Side Weekly 6100 S. Blackstone Ave. Chicago, IL 60637 For advertising inquiries, contact: (773) 234-5388 or advertising@southsideweekly.com

Cover art by Lizzie Smith

IN CHICAGO IN THIS A week’s worth of developing stories, odd events, and signs of the times, culled from the desks, inboxes, and wandering eyes of the editors

An Update Over the past two weeks, young black Chicago activists have organized a series of protests in the wake of the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minnesota. On July 7, college students organized a shutdown of the Dan Ryan Expressway and other roadways in the city. On July 9, activists attempted to “shut down” the Taste of Chicago food festival in Grant Park in order to disrupt “business as usual,” staging a die-in and taking over Michigan Avenue and other parts of the Loop. One of the organizers, Ja’mal Green, was arrested and charged on several felony counts, but a video of his altercation with a police officer later raised questions about who was at fault. On July 13, a vigil was held in the Loop in memory of Sandra Bland, who died in police custody one year ago. According to the Tribune, more than two hundred people, including several of Bland's relatives, attended the event.

On July 15, Assata's Daughters, a grassroots organization for young black women, organized a march from 51st Street and King Drive through Bronzeville, explicitly calling for the complete defunding of police departments and prison abolition. These continuing demonstrations also come on the heels of Alderman Ed Burke's proposed “Blue Lives Matter” ordinance, which would classify attacks on police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians as hate crimes. According to DNAinfo, other aldermen have noted that the ordinance is not likely to pass this summer.

Slightly Less Testing for All The Illinois State Board of Education announced last Monday that high school students will no longer take the PARCC test. Illinois schools will instead offer a state-paid SAT exam to all eleventh graders. During the two years in which the PARCC was administrated, the test drew criticism for its length and its computer-based system, as well as claims that it wasn’t properly vetted and contained misleading questions. In Chicago and across the state, PARCC testing periods were marked by opt-out campaigns, with ten percent of eligible CPS students refusing to take the test in the 2014-2015 school year. But the state’s real problem with the PARCC might be that it wasn’t testing enough students. As the Tribune reported, the U.S. Department of Education placed the state on “high risk status” in April for its uneven application of the PARCC test to high school students. Federal law mandates that schools test reading and math at least once during high school, but during the rollout of the PARCC, Illinois tried to give districts flexibility in which sets of PARCC tests they administered, resulting in some students going through four years of school without being tested.

Cart(oon)ography Since its release two weeks ago, Pokémon Go—the new game about Nintendo’s cartoon creatures first made popular in the nineties—has been the subject of many rumors, from apocryphal tales of traffic accidents caused by Pikachu to fatal instances of trespassing. In Chicago, people were quick to point out that DNAinfo’s crowdsourced map of game locations shows a strong bias toward the North Side and Downtown for Pokéstops, Pokémon, and gyms (in short, everything in the game), seemingly further proof of structural inequality. However, lower usage can indicate something more complex than a lack of infrastructure. The in-game Pokémon Go maps are populated from an earlier game, which combined information from in-game users and Google Maps to create an immersive experience. Museums and public art, as well as businesses and churches, all count as landmarks. While a point can be made that some neighborhoods have more landmarks than others, crowdsourced maps are also a reflection of who is playing the game—and reporting on the maps—not necessarily the reality of the game itself. On DNAinfo’s map, Hyde Park is by far the most well-documented neighborhood on the South Side, but in and along Midway Plaisance alone there are nearly thirty Pokéstops and four gyms that DNAinfo does not list at the time of writing (according to the Weekly’s own on-the-ground research).

This invites a question, one that seems especially apropos in this era of augmented reality: if you haven’t seen something, does that mean it isn’t there?

ISSUE learn from each other

“We do not want guns blazing. We want service.” andrea salcedo.................................4 caps and restorative justice, explained

What is restorative justice? manny ramos.....................................5 the right to beauty

“Simply thinking about it gives me thrills: What change will it bring here?” jasmin liang.......................................6 unforeseen circumstances

Neither denied visas nor last-minute line-up changes could stop attendees from having a good time. carlos ballasteros........................10 friendly competition

It’s laced through the city, a part of its lifeblood. austin brown..................................12 the south side’s strange train

“Not enough trains!” daniel kay hertz............................14 in her own words

HEAVN exists in a politically and socially charged America. f.amanda tugade............................16 notes from the white rhino: fresh hair

“‘I looked like one of the Beatles.’” ray salazar......................................17

S

ON OUR WEBSITE SOUTHSIDEWEEKLY.COM woodlawn’s new book fair

Asadah Kirkland discusses her new creation, the Soulful Chicago Book Fair karen ford bit.ly/29Qszsz

SSW Radio soundcloud.com/south-side-weekly-radio JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 3

Learn From Each Other

A beat meeting facilitator on building trust between the community and the police

BY ANDREA SALCEDO

L

eonard McGee is the civilian who runs the monthly Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy meetings in CPD Beat 211. The beat runs from 31st Street to 35th Street and from the Dan Ryan to Lake Michigan, serving the neighborhood within Douglas known as “the Gap.” At the most basic level, he acts as a liaison between the community and the police. The sixty-three-yearold has lived within the beat’s boundaries for the past thirty years; he f irst served as a beat facilitator for the 21st District and switched to the 2nd District after the district boundaries changed. At a meeting this month, McGee talked about why CAPS meetings in Beat 211 differ from other beats, why it’s best that civilians (and not police) run these meetings, and how residents can build a healthy relationship with beat off icers.

Can you tell me a little bit about the history of the CAPS program in this particular beat?

We were meeting before there was a CAPS. The Gap Community Organization, which I’m also the president of, met with the police department at the 21st District station, and then the CAPS program came along. We have seen CAPS when it was most effective: years ago, when they used to have marches, we had drug houses in the neighborhood and [we] confronted people directly. In the last ten years CAPS has been more politicized. It has gotten away from its core mission of engaging people and engaging the community. Some of the funding was taken out of CAPS, where they used to give out gifts and little prizes in the community. That detracted from the program. It incentives people to come if they can win something in a raffle every month. [The program] gave out whistles, door knockers to keep you from breaking into somebody’s house. It had a sense of community.

The CAPS program on Beat 211 has been very successful. Last year we had a march and we must have had over 150 peo-

4 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

ple come out to march on 31st Street, which is one of our hot spots. It has been effective.

When we call the police, they come. Years ago we used to call and they did not come.

We are training people in this beat on how to [call] 311, what do you look for, how do you talk to the police, how do you interact with the police. Our call rate has gone up.

It is holding the police accountable but the residents as well. We are an anomaly [compared to other beats]. We are not the norm.

How would you describe the relationship between CAPS officers and the residents of Beat 211?

If you listen to the conversation [in our beat meeting], there’s no hostility. There was a calmness in the room, because they have faith and confidence in the person they talk to. The officer is very respectful. It’s like, you are just my mate and we are just going through the process and getting things done.

Is there something you would do to improve the CAPS program in your beat? If so, what would that be?

Figure out a way to get more people to come, to see there is value in having a relationship with the police on your beat. That relationship goes a lot further than just “Hey you, I need help now,” but actually building a rapport, building a relationship, building respect, and that gets results. The residents are now taking pictures and sending them to the police. They are not hiding behind the phone. They are saying: I am involved, I am engaged. And when the police have support from the community they actually police better, because now they are not harassing people, they are being dispatched based upon a call. When you are visible, if you stand up, speak out, they can make change.

But if we do not stand up and speak out, [they] cannot help.

Is there something you would do to improve the CAPS program in general?

People who speak up need to get credit.

When people get recognized for speaking up, it becomes a norm. Right now when people speak up, it seems like it is an anomaly, because it is not recognized. For example, the officer said tonight, “Thank you.” A real simple word but it speaks volumes because they think, there is an appreciation for what I am doing as a resident. They applauded the police because they felt that they were getting service, not protection. We stress the issue of service. We do not want protection.

We do not want guns blazing. We want service.

What are aspects of the CAPS program that you consider the most effective and why?

The most effective thing is when civilians run the meeting. It is among peers, residents to residents, citizens to citizens, versus having the authority figure running it.

Is it common for civilians to be running meetings or are most meetings run by police officers?

Years ago it was always the civilians running the meetings, who were unpaid volunteers, but I noticed that’s not the case anymore.

What are some obstacles or what is not working within the CAPS program in your district?

The biggest obstacle is trust. People in my neighborhood have called [police] and they were afraid to leave their name. I have told people in my neighborhood that you do not want to be anonymous, because when you stand up and you speak out, people respect that. It may seem risky at first because you are not accustomed to doing that, but if you leave your name, there is accountability.

When you say I am anonymous, it is a soso call. [The police] will go but the results will be a lot different. If you stand out[side] and wait for the supervisor, you will find out that that supervisor wants the same thing you want. The supervisor recognizes you are committed. When people recognize you want a better community, from a policing side, they police better because they realize they have got backup. We generally only talk in terms of a one-way street, but the police have to be backed up by the citizens and the citizens have to be backed up by the police.

What could the community do to improve these issues and what could CAPS officers do to work with the community and improve these issues?

In our area we have used an app called GroupMe. The way the app works is that you can sign people up so they can get [group] text messages directly to their phone or to the app. When someone sees something, they call 911, they describe it and they alert other people to call on the same issue [via GroupMe]. So now there is a pool of calls going on the same issue, with the same address, with the same description. We have gone to another level of organization to ensure that we can better service and better support the community and the police.

What could you do to improve the communication among beats?

Get rid of boundaries and start doing best practices, [learn from] what works in another beat. And communicating across beats, rather than [beats being] silos. There is a silo between our district and the 1st District, even if we share boundaries. We even suggested that they have joint beat meetings, [so] people now learn [from] other people and make a bigger family. ¬

POLICING

MARIA CARDONA / CITY BUREAU

CAPS and Restorative Justice, Explained

These reports were published in collaboration with City Bureau, a Chicago-based journalism lab.

BY MANNY RAMOS

T

he Chicago Alternative Police Strategy (CAPS) began in the 1990s and was widely viewed as a success in healing police-community relations. However, in the early 2000s, the program began to crumble because of a lack of resources as leaders in the police department turned their focus away from community policing. With police misconduct cases and the high-profile police killing of Laquan McDonald, trust between police and communities is at a historic low, and the mayor’s office has admitted a need to improve this relationship.

In a 180-plus-page report released in April, the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force addressed issues facing the Chicago Police Department and its broken relationship with communities of color. The task force found “substantial evidence that people of color—particularly African Americans—have had disproportionately negative experience with the police

over an extended period of time.”

Some police officials have suggested that a revitalized CAPS program will be at the forefront of mending broken police-community relations in the wake of the Task Force report.

What might the new version of CAPS look like?

Superintendent Eddie Johnson supports the use of a restorative justice model when police are dealing with young people of different cultures and races. Teaming up with YMCA’s Bridging the Divide, CPD intends to train police officers in restorative justice methods and challenge their biases or perceptions about race. How the CPD looks to roll out a restorative justice model on a citywide scale remains to be seen, but similar practices are already implemented in some high schools across Chicago.

What is restorative justice?

A restorative model of justice stands in contrast with a punitive model of justice. Whereas the punitive framework seeks to answer three things (what rule was broken? who did it? and what punishment is deserved?), restorative justice seeks to resolve the conflict with dialogue and community engagement. The offender meets with the victim and members of the community in what is deemed a safe space.

Hope Lassen is the training coordinator and former manager of the Restorative Justice program at Alternatives Inc., a Chicago-based youth development group. She uses the analogy of an iceberg to explain restorative justice: when a person commits a crime or offense, others might just look above the surface and condemn them without getting down to the root cause. “Underneath [the action] are deep-seated traumas, violence in the

neighborhood, poverty, disengaged parents,” says Lassen. “What restorative justice is looking for are those root causes, and searching underneath the surface of the iceberg.”

What are peace circles?

The peace circle activity is a cornerstone of the restorative justice model. Peace circles are designated areas where people are able to speak about their conflicts openly with a moderator present. Victims can speak up against those who they believe have wronged them, and those who have wronged others are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions in front of their peers. Peace circles often feature a rug or scarf on the floor, with a plant at the center of the circle. The idea is to create a safe environment that is soothing and relaxing, so as to better facilitate openness and honesty. JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 5

The Right to Beauty

Ethical Redevelopment presents a new guideline for conscientious urban development practices

BY JASMIN LIANG

O

nstage, a man was delivering a stream of words and a woman translated his words into a stream of movement. Together, real-estate developer Peter Levavi and dancer Stacy Patrice composed a marriage of language and body, as if to symbolize the union of two phrases on the screen behind them: “ethical” and “redevelopment.”

Their performance was one part of an hour-long banquet of poetry, dance, and music at the Logan Center for the Arts on June 22. Several Chicago-based artists, from the Rebirth Poetry Ensemble to Chicago Youth Poet Laureate E’mon Lauren to the musician Coultrain, gathered at this “public convening” to anoint the birth of Ethical Redevelopment, “an evolving set of principles drawn from artist-led, neighborhood-based development work happening on Chicago’s South Side,” as the first page of the event booklet says.

“Ethical Redevelopment is both a strategy and a programming series,” says Lori Berko, the Chief Operations Officer of Place Lab. “As a strategy, it demonstrates how one can shift the value system from conventional financial practices towards community-led, conscientious development that involves artists, neighbors, and other organizers from the community.”

The Place Lab, a partnership between the University of Chicago’s Arts + Public Life and Harris School of Public Policy founded in 2014, is “a think tank for cultural transformation,” in its leader Theaster Gates’s own words. In 2014, in response to a request by the Knight Foundation, the Place Lab launched a research project to codify practices in Gates’s famed urban redevelopment work, most of which is corralled under his Rebuild Foundation: Black Cinema House, Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, the Stony Island Arts Bank, and more. After conducting a year of interviews with participants in Gates’s projects,

6 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

Place Lab came up with the concept of Ethical Redevelopment, which consists of nine principles—or, more precisely, catchphrases—each working toward ethical urban planning. “Repurpose + Re-propose,” for example, advocates repurposing available yet overlooked resources and assets; “Engaged Participation” stresses engagement with neighbors and locals; “Constellations” calls for building ecosystems of diverse talents. Simple and easy to remember, the principles themselves are reminiscent of a self-help guide.

Their familiarity is intentional. “The concepts themselves are not innovative.

They are simply underutilized,” Berko said, acknowledging that Place Lab’s mission is more to summarize and promote than to invent. “People are doing this type of work all over: in Gary, in Detroit, in Akron, in Miami. They are facing issues common to most post-industrial cities, like safety issues, increases in population and poverty, and general problems across the board,” she said. “What the Place Lab tries to do is to elevate, demonstrate, and magnify those who are doing this type of work and get those who may not think about some of these principles, such as traditional developers and financial institutions, to understand and hopefully change their mind about public policy.”

But how is Ethical Redevelopment going to convince for-profits to sacrifice their interests for conscientious urban intervention? Carson Poole, Place Lab’s project specialist, explains that Ethical Redevelopment does not aim to market its philosophy to everyone outside its circle, but rather to targeted groups. He compared development to the beer-brewing industry: “There are some people doing it in the old-fashioned, time-consuming way, where quality, and craft is privileged; some people do it in a high-profit, low-quality way. Every business chooses their own mode of operation

based on their motivations. You just have to find the right group of people.”

T

o attract the right groups of people, one must broadcast as loud as possible—or so seemed to be the philosophy of the convening, which felt at times like a product launch.

The crowd burst into thundering applause and cheers as Quenna Lené Barrett, the event’s emcee, saluted the audience in her shimmering outfit.

“I love Theaster Gates’s style of pre-

community organizers spoke about their understanding of ethical redevelopment.

Among them, UofC professor Cathy Cohen and Charlene Carruthers, the national leader of Black Youth Project 100, both endorsed a black, queer feminist approach to urban development. The event concluded with a Q&A session between Gates, Steve Edwards, the executive director of the UofC’s Institute of Politics, and audience members.

The attendees, many of whom took notes during the speeches, were mainly

“The concepts themselves are not innovative. They are simply underutilized.”

—Lori Berko, Place Lab COO

sentation,” a woman in the audience said.

“They are not boring or dry like usual policy panels. They always have music, arts, and great speakers—feels like a big party.”

That’s just what Gates and Berko intended—the convening was designed to be interactive and highly theatrical, though what follows is less so. “The public convening will be followed by nine monthly private workshops where we invite practitioners from all over the country to learn about the principles, as well as an online forum and two film screenings,” said Berko.

“But we think the convening makes a good introduction.”

The panel consisted of three acts: first, several local poets, musicians, and artists were invited to create original performances in reaction to the principles of ethical redevelopment; next, five academics and

professionals, artists, and graduate students; perhaps a handful were residents from local neighborhoods, many of whom had to take time off from their jobs to attend the event, inconveniently scheduled for 2pm to 5pm on a workday.

“I had to tell my boss that I was sick so that I can come here,” an audience member from Bridgeport said, laughing. “But it was worth the effort.”

I

n contrast, an audience of local residents showed up to the kickoff of a programming series at the Black Cinema House on Sunday, June 19. The 2015 documentary screened, 70 Acres in Chicago, tells the story of the Chicago Housing Authority public housing project Cabrini-Green and its transformation over the past twenty years.

Once home to thousands of African-Amer-

DEVELOPMENT

JASMIN LIANG

ican residents, Cabrini-Green was torn down to make space for new mixed-income neighborhoods, a well-intended experiment gone awry in practice. The documentary argues that the renovation displaced many original Cabrini-Green residents from their homes into the South and West Sides of Chicago, only to be barred from returning to the area because new requirements demanded that residents have a clean criminal record.

In-depth and provocative, 70 Acres in Chicago uncovers the complex dynamic between class, race, and urban spaces. The struggles and conflicts it brings up are also Ethical Redevelopment’s central questions: How can one avoid the cycle of anoth-

er Cabrini-Green? How can one navigate urban redevelopment ethically and conscientiously within an existing web of interests—public, private, and local? These questions were brought into discussion afterward, where participants shared stories and opinions about the redevelopment work within their own neighborhoods.

Many were worried about being displaced in the future. Only around twenty participants were present, but the conversation grew organically, one story building off another, as everyone jumped in. The conversation recognized the severity of the present problem and of collective need for change, but explored little in the way of future solutions—and the residents seemed to feel ill-

equipped to act, often turning to present Place Lab employees for answers.

At the end of the discussion, people exchanged phone numbers and cards.

“You never know when you might need them,” said one of the participants, a Washington Park resident.

“You know, I think some of [generating new possibilities in the community] is just about asking for cards, cellphone numbers, or email addresses and followed up with something like: you said something that really touched me, I would like to talk more about it. I think it all starts there,” Gates said at the public convening. His words resonated with one of the speakers, Carruthers, who spoke about a civic move-

ment stemming from a dance studio.

Perhaps the seed of a new movement was planted in Logan Center that day as well, since the public convening is intended as a platform to give rise to new “Constellations” and opportunities. Gates said that he wanted a space to freely communicate with everyone and offer himself “as a target of critique.”

“We know that the UofC has a nice, 474-seat performance hall,” Gates said, “so can we do something with it?”

“T

his place presents so much possibility and hope,” says Brooklyn Sabino-Smith, who works at the front desk of the Stony Island Arts

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 7

DEVELOPMENT

JASMIN LIANG

Bank. “Having world-class art exhibitions in a neighborhood where it is even difficult to find a grocery store. Simply thinking about it gives me thrills: What change will it bring here?”

Since its opening last October, Stony Island Arts Bank has become one of Gates’s most well-known projects on the South Side. Not surprisingly, it is also the site for the upcoming private monthly salons in the Ethical Redevelopment series. Located on 68th Street and Stony Island Avenue, the Arts Bank serves as both a public arts venue and an archival house—and perhaps most importantly as a space that can evoke new faith in the community’s potential. The success of the Arts Bank, in Gates’s vison, will ultimately attract the economic investment that Greater Grand Crossing and the surrounding area need. When the art thrives, the groceries will come—though reality shows that this vision is still beyond the horizon.

8 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

Even on a Saturday afternoon, the Arts Bank can be unexpectedly quiet. One can hear footsteps echoing through the empty corridor. Sabino-Smith said that sometimes she can sit for hours without anybody showing up.

“I think the neighborhood still needs time to psychologically accept the building,” Sabino-Smith said. “The bank has been closed for so many years, and it just reopened last October. Everything is still in the process of planning. As you can see, we haven’t even decided what sign we are going to use, though somebody suggested a giant neon sign.”

Neon sign or not, Greater Grand Crossing has certainly begun to register their presence. “One day we were crossing a street a few blocks away from the Arts Bank, and a traffic guide greeted us and asked, ‘You guys work for Theaster, right?’

I guess we just gave off a different vibe from others of the neighborhood,” Sabi-

no-Smith said. A while ago, she stopped wearing her flowing, artistic clothes to work. She and her coworkers, she realized, are in some way living billboards for the Arts Bank, representing an alternative lifestyle to many in the community.

Despite the occasional hours of emptiness, the Arts Bank’s calendar is constantly filled with events, all designed to engage with locals: a House Tea ceremony and Friday Disco for residents to come and relax after work, writer’s workshops and library access, group cataloguing activities and home movie screenings, all of which help foster a sense of belonging in community.

The Bank also employs people from the area. In many aspects, the Arts Bank’s organization faithfully reflects Ethical Redevelopment’s principles, though to succeed in practice it needs to take a few more strides.

Sabino-Smith says the Arts Bank is still seeking to collaborate more with the local community and to make its name

known to neighbors. Over the past few months, the Arts Bank has increased its facilities and opened up more of its resources to the public. Rather than trying to impose itself on the neighborhood overnight, the Arts Bank follows Ethical Redevelopment‘s instruction “Place Over Time” and patiently cultivates the root it implanted.

“We have a very intricate relationship with the neighborhood, so we must be very careful in how we navigate it,” Sabino-Smith said.

Despite the efforts of projects like the Arts Bank to present themselves as inviting, some in the neighborhood are skeptical about the possible effects of any development. Participants at the Black Cinema House screening worried about displacement, while one audience member at the convening asked how redevelopment could avoid gentrification.

“Gentrification is an internal conflict in Gates’s development strategy,” says Clare Wan, another attendee at the convening, and a UofC grad student who studies the South Side’s informal economy. “Any topdown development work that attempts to stimulate local economy through arts and culture can theoretically lead to gentrification. If they succeed in bringing in new investments, it inevitably raises the home prices and will force out those who cannot afford the rent.” She questioned how much Gates’s projects and the new investments he expects can provide income opportunities to locals.

Meanwhile, the workshops that will be occurring in the Arts Bank won’t include residents’ voices, though the conversations will eventually be published online. The private workshops’ participants include representatives from arts and development nonprofits and from traditional real estate companies, from the Chicago Housing Authority and similar government agencies across the country. In part, that’s because Ethical Redevelopment is not a program intended for the general public, but for professionals and policy makers.

This exclusivity points to a larger problem underlying the Arts Bank and Gates’s other projects. While the Arts Bank provides a generous number of programs and resources to the locals, it offers them neither the power nor the autonomy to demand

those resources they are most in need of— nor is it intended to. The exclusiveness of Ethical Redevelopment workshops hardens this line between the benefactors and recipients, a line that also prevents Gates and his team from fully integrating into the community. But one question always remains: are the locals truly the recipients of Ethical Redevelopment? Who will really benefit?

Gates is not unaware of these questions, which he in fact posed to the public on June 22. “When is the moment that the resources in a place can be solicited by the people who live in the place and then given access directly to those resources? Because the resources are consistently coming from somewhere. And who are the people that manage and administrate those resources?

I think we need as much policy to govern that,” Gates replied to one audience member’s question. “Why can’t the poor [directly] organize?”

Gates explained that a third-party administrator like Rebuild Foundation is necessary in guiding the under-resourced.

“There is a lot of fear when the poor realize the amount of injustice put on them and begin to rebel. There is a systematic attempt to put that off,” he said. ”We know that it is a sincere cry from the masses, it is just an undirected cry….I think there is a way in which we have to begin this radical love and joy, radical organizing and emerging work [through a third party’s platform].”

So that work will begin at the private workshops at the Arts Bank. “We want people who participate in the monthly salons to really get at the meat of the project. Part of the goal is also to refine the principles of Ethical Redevelopment,” said Berko. “These principles are not set in stone—we want others to opine, to challenge, and provoke us. We are learning at the same time as others are learning and sharing.”

“W

e must put the most marginalized at the center of the table,” Cathy Cohen said at the June 22 convening. “A few hipster cafes will not make the problem go away.”

During my visit, I passed by the area where the Stony Island Arts Bank plans to set up a bar that serves wine, beer, and

other refreshments. Will the Arts Bank become little more than a “hipster cafe” that allows residents from up north to visit without encouraging them to venture further into the South Side? Or will it become what the principles of Ethical Redevelopment promise: a place that fundamentally empowers an under-resourced community?

Another initiative combining arts and urban renewal was announced a few weeks before the Ethical Redevelopment convening: the UofC’s plan to expand its cultural enterprises in Washington Park, building a new “Arts Block” adjacent to the Arts Incubator, BING Art Books, and Currency Exchange Cafe. Some of these arts spaces are, or will be, housed in vacant buildings, former grocery and liquor stores, amenities that are scarce in the neighborhood.

Although the project is led by Gates, an early June Tribune article suggests that few residents from the area were consulted or invited to participate in the programming of these projects.

A few blocks northeast of the future Arts Block stands Washington Park’s Dyett High School, which will reopen in September as Dyett High School for the Arts, despite the neighborhood’s call for a science-focused school that will open up more career paths for local youth. Undeniably, arts and culture have breathed some fresh life into the neighborhoods, be it Washington Park or Greater Grand Crossing or South Shore, but their presence has not changed these neighborhoods’ economic struggles. If nothing else, though, Ethical Redevelopment displays genuine care for ethics and humanism—in “ensuring that beauty remains high in the hierarchy of human rights,” as Gates put it.

As the heavy iron door of the Arts Bank shut behind me after my visit, a woman with a baby stroller walked up to me. “What is this place? I pass by here every day and never noticed that it’s open.”

I explained the Arts Bank to her as best I could, and handed her the program I had.

“Oh, they got Frankie Knuckles here?

I love his music! I’m going to tell all my friends about this!” ¬

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 9

Unforeseen Circumstances

Twenty-seven hours of Latin American music at Ruido Fest 2016

BY CARLOS BALLASTEROS

MANUEL VELASCO

T

he weekend before last, Ruido Fest—a three-day music festival put on by Metronome, the same Chicago-based company behind Riot Fest—took over Addams/Medill Park in Pilsen for the second year in a row. With fifty musical acts spread out across three stages over a combined timespan of twentyseven hours, festivalgoers were treated to a continuous stream of Latin American music from all corners. Live lucha libre matches, family-friendly vibes, and a myriad of classic Mexican street foods also helped solidify Ruido Fest as of one the best outdoor musical experiences for fans of el rock en español in the United States.

But before a single churro could be sold (or, for those familiar with Spanish vernacular, smoked), Ruido Fest was in muddy waters.

A day before Miami art rock outfit Minimal was set to kick things off, festival organizers announced that Chilean headliner La Ley could not make it to their Friday night set due to “unforeseen circumstances” and that

10 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

another Chilean reggae band, Gondwana, would perform in their place. Without further explanation from the festival, rumors spread among the crowds as to why the band didn’t show up. Most chalked it up to problems with la migra: many international artists—particularly those without a Top 100 hit and/or outstanding notoriety—often get trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare when coming into the United States. (Billboard later reported that La Ley “canceled their participation because of traveling and logistic conflicts.”)

However, given that the official Ruido Fest T-shirts—which came in two similarlycolored prints, one featuring legendary Mexican wrestler, El Santo, and what can only be described as a Jedi-flipping cat on the other—had Gondwana instead of La Ley on the band list on the back, it is likely that Max Wagner, owner of Metronome, and company knew before Thursday afternoon’s announcement that La Ley wasn’t going to show up. In other words, either Ruido Fest

organizers found a way to get hundreds of T-shirts with Gondwana instead of La Ley on the back in the span of twenty-four hours, or they deliberately withheld information about La Ley’s cancellation until the very last minute, in which case La Ley fans might have grounds for a refund. (At press time, Ruido Fest had not responded to requests for comment.)

Members of La Ley weren’t the only ones that had trouble coming into the country: during her performance on Saturday night, Mexican pop queen and nine-time Latin Grammy-winner Natalia Lafourcade announced that her band’s pianist had been denied a visa to enter the country. Another possible victim of visa trouble was Chilean singer-songwriter Mon Laferte, who was replaced without prior announcement by self-described cavernícola and notorious showman, Silverio, on Sunday.

(At press time, Laferte’s representatives had not responded to requests for comment.)

Thankfully, neither denied visas nor last-

minute lineup changes could stop attendees from having a good time: even without being billed in advance, Gondwana’s reggae vibes were warmly welcomed by a dancing crowd cooked by summer sunshine, while Lafourcarde seamlessly took over for her missing pianist to close out her set with “Ella Es Bonita” from 2006’s Hu Hu Hu and crowd-favorite “Mi Lugar Favorito” from her most recent record, Hasta la Raíz (2015).

Silverio, however, was in a league of his own. Su Majestad Imperial (a fan nickname) closed out the festival’s smaller stage on Friday in spectacular fashion. He followed it up with a set for an official Ruido Fest afterparty at Chop Shop in Wicker Park on Saturday night. But it was on Sunday, when he took over for the absent Mon Laferte at one of the festival's two main stages, that Su Alteza Serenisísima (another fan nickname) showed us—and the world—just what he’s made of. Donning a black leather jacket, black faded jeans and a button-up blood-red shirt—rags he would ultimately

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MANUEL VELASCO

CARLA MORRISON

No Mexican beer was available for purchase. strip, revealing his trademark red European spandex—Silverio strutted on stage to a largely surprised audience and proceeded to deliver the most exciting performance of the weekend, his third in less than forty-eight hours. His music, described by the artist himself as “EDM for cavemen,” demanded the attention of passersby, including many families with young children enjoying an otherwise beautiful afternoon. It’s unclear whether the crowd wanted to hurt Silverio or to amp up the show’s atmosphere but, by the end of the forty-five-minute set, the self-described “Elephant Man of industrial music” had successfully dodged dozens of half-full cans of Coors Light. Security

personnel next to the stage seemed like they didn’t know whether to be worried, amazed, or appalled, and, to be honest, neither did I. But while Silverio undoubtedly took the gold for showmanship, it was Mexican indie pop singer-songwriter Carla Morrison who delivered the weekend’s best vocal performance. A tasteful blend of the late Amy Winehouse and Selena Quintanilla, Morrison, whose music was described

by NPR’s Felix Contreras as existing “in a private emotional space where she can address joys, heartbreaks and secret desires,” performed a number of cuts from her goldcertified album, Déjenme Llorar (2015), late Friday afternoon as the sun set behind her.

CARLA MORRISON

Ruido Fest’s smallest stage played host to dozens of indie rock outfits from across the continent. Local favorites You Are Here—a four-man group hailing from different parts of the South Side—kicked off the festivities on Saturday with their unique blend of upbeat indie guitar riffs and melodic choruses. The crowd, split evenly between longtime local fans and newcomers, was larger than expected given that the band was set to go on stage just five minutes after the gates to the festival opened. Adan & Xavi, a folksy indie super-group of sorts consisting of multi-instrumentalists Adán Jodorowsky (the son of storied film director Alejandro Jodorowsky) and Xavi Polycarpe, also gave a touching performance late Sunday afternoon.

Activism was another distinct feature of Ruido Fest. A number of bands, such as La Santa Cecilia and Maldita Vecindad, demanded justice “para los maestros CNTE en Oaxaca, los 43 estudiantes desaparecidos en Ayotzinapa,” ("for the CNTE teachers

in Oaxaca, the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa") and for black lives in the United States. Pilsen Alliance, a nonprofit social justice organization “committed to the development of grassroots leadership and the realization of social progress in Pilsen,” was also present, educating festivalgoers on the hardships many residents of the historically working-class and immigrant neighborhood currently face as their blocks rapidly gentrify.

Yet despite the activist presence throughout all three days, Ruido Fest’s corporate feel was unshakable. The festival's main sponsors—AT&T, Coors Light, and Toyota—each had a stage named after them, while the handful of VIP areas seemed to take up a little too much space at the stillrelatively-small festival. The coldest of it all, however was the fact that no Mexican beer was available for purchase (thanks, Coors Light). So, in the end, while the crowd and the musical performers all brought their A game, a corporate attitude nevertheless bled through into the weekend. ¬

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 11

Friendly Competition The Era leads a master class on the legends and legacy of footwork

BY AUSTIN BROWN

T

he basement area of BING Art Books is a strange space. There’s not much to it—some brick and concrete, basically—but it comes together nicely to create a near-eerie feel under the otherwise pleasant bookstore. It was here, on a mid-June evening, that Chicago footwork dance crew The Era, close kin of DJ Rashad’s legendary Teklife label, gave a crash course on the origins and developments of footwork—a wide, but often unseen, world.

Most listeners outside of Chicago have discovered footwork, a hyper-aggressive derivative of house music, relatively recently—more than a decade after the

12 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

invention of the dance and the music associated with it. A series of releases from the British label Planet Mu—notable compilations like Bangs & Works Vol. 1 (A Chicago Footwork Compilation) and tracks like Addison Groove’s “Footcrab”—led to a boom in interest in the genre across Europe. The music seemed odd, complex, and even alien to many listeners.

But some five years after this international “debut,” footwork has spread further afield than any of its earliest pioneers might have dreamed—producers in Japan and Berlin dabble in the style, and trendsetting magazines like Pitchfork and FACT run features about upcoming

footwork releases. Somehow, a genre that was originally described as impenetrably insular—a 2010 piece in The Guardian called Bangs and Works Vol. 1 “a snapshot of a world most people outside Chicago never knew existed, thrillingly strange and alien”—has become one of the most invogue styles for experimental producers and DJs. For many casual electronic music listeners, footwork productions remain listenable and even enjoyable, but impenetrable for the body. But as many of the videos shown in the basement of BING demonstrated, the history of footwork lies not simply in its appeal to international

listeners and fans of progressive electronic music—in fact, that’s unimportant to most of Chicago’s footworkers.

Through a series of videos played in the basement of BING, members of The Era and their affiliates trace the history of footwork not just to its recent popularization, but much, much further back.

Early-aughts productions like “Let Me See Your Footwerk” and recordings of the “House O’ Matics” from the 1990s reveal, through subdued but astonishing footage, just how long the genre has been “Bang’n on King Drive” (the street is only one block east of BING) and through the basements of generations of dancers. One

MUSIC

WILLS GLASSPIEGEL

of the videos captured scenes of dozens of children footworking through the streets of Chicago for the annual Bud Billiken Parade. The footwork dancers and producers in attendance mention obscure-tomost names and cliques as “legends.”

As the evidence piles, it becomes abundantly clear that footwork isn’t just a small “scene” in a few neighborhoods of Chicago—it’s laced through the city, a part of its lifeblood vital to artists and families alike.

In a later conversation I had with footwork historian Wills Glasspiegel and Litebulb, one of The Era’s foremost teachers, the bonds that the music has forged and strengthened over the years became even more apparent. “When you do something that has meaning creatively,” Glasspiegel says, “it starts to resonate out. And what we realized was that this thing that was made for very intimate circumstances in South Chicago—it was meaningful. And as you realize it’s connected to struggles and music and creativity across time—it’s great to be realizing that, ‘cause there’s so many options for what you can do and what footwork can be channeling.”

Of course, in the abstracted, experimental world of Berliners and tastemakers that have come across footwork, dance may be important, but it’s often ancillary, a

simple result of the speed and infectiousness of the music in the genre. But back here in Chicago, the dance of footwork— and the “friendly competition” that comes with it, which is mentioned throughout the night and in my later conversations— is what the genre is based on: what keeps it from being a niche concern for music geeks and instead turns it into a pulse underneath the city.

“We as DJs, we are nothing without [the dancers],” noted genre luminary and producer Traxman.

T

he Era led a panel upstairs in the bookstore after the viewing. It included some of the best-known progenitors of the footwork sound along with newcomers and lesser-known (but just as important) luminaries. Listening to legends like Traxman and RP Boo exchange stories about their own histories with the genre alongside the relatively young members of The Era, the most notable thing about the conversation wasn’t any individual story, but rather the casual ease with which the history started pouring out.

At one point, an audience member asked with bated breath, “So, where did the 160 bpm come from? How did you guys decide on that?”

“Oh yeah, I came up with that,” answered Traxman, smiling wistfully. It’s that dismissive approach to history—Oh yeah, I came up with that—that reminds an onlooker of just how current the “history” of this genre really is.

The members of The Era are aware of this, of course—even their name, “The Era,” is a reference to the here and now, this era, the time that they have to tell the history of footwork and to build the next steps for the genre. They hope to help even more people have revelations like the one I had in BING—realizations of just how far back this genre goes, and how important this music and these dances are to the soul of Chicago itself. They’ve done plenty of work to this end already: the group recently received a sponsored residency at the University of Chicago’s Arts and Public Life, which helped put on the BING event, and they’ve spread the genre’s story through articles in The Fader, as well as Vice’s electronic music vertical, Thump.

They’ve even helped teach classes on footwork in Japan, where Litebulb and Glasspiegel say both the sound and dance of the genre have taken hold.

Despite all this, The Era seem to see their group’s place in footwork’s history up to this point little more than a practice round. They’re interested in educating and simply moving their bodies, of course, but the rich tradition of choreographic dance—and the narratives within—that footwork is a part of (as Litebulb and Glasspiegel describe it) run just as deep. Right now, they’re most excited about their upcoming “debut stage performance” in Hamilton Park on August 27. They go into just enough description

about this performance to entice, but they also seem to enjoy keeping it somewhat under wraps. They do let me in on one detail—the performance will include lyrical performances, what Litebulb describes as “footworking with words.”

“It’s pretty much about the everyday footwork experience, you know,” says Litebulb of the upcoming performance.

“Being able to look at Chicago through our day-to-day lives and what we go through. A key element is helping to put things in perspective for the footwork world—just showing how we develop and what we’re working towards.”

A

fter the panel, I went back downstairs and saw all the musicians and dancers from the panel congregating in the basement again. The space was filled with dancers gyrating and flailing while their friends and fellow artists looked on—the space that had seemed bare turned out to be a great place to dance. I crouched down to ask Glasspiegel (manning a camera) if it would be possible to ask them a few questions.

“Could you maybe wait a bit?” he said.

“These guys have been looking forward to this all night.”

So I sat there watching for a minute instead, as Glasspiegel took pictures of the dancers whipping their feet and legs in time to a relentless thump of the beat, taking full advantage of the time they had to relax—if you want to call it that—after a long day of living. The Era will be debuting their “In The Wurkz” performance in Hamilton Park on August 27.

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 13

transit of the rich, and why did that matter?

Especially when the difference in fares was pretty small.

The South Side's Strange Sandy Johnston on the past and future of the Metra Electric Train

BY DANIEL KAY HERTZ

COURTESY OF THE CHICAGO DISPATCH

S

completely different beasts, but in fact there is—or at least was—more overlap than you might think. What was Metra Electric service like, say, before World War Two?

So maybe we should start with this: What’s wrong with the Metra Electric today?

Yeah. And to be fair, the commuter services today mostly look like they always have— except Metra Electric. The South Chicago branch had service every ten minutes (and every twenty on weekends and evenings) in 1946. There was a Rand McNally map in 1947 that included the Illinois Central (now Metra Electric) along with the “L” lines as rapid transit.

andy Johnston recently graduated from the University at Albany, earning a Master’s in Regional Planning with a concentration in Transportation and a certificate in Urban Policy. Over the past year, he completed a master’s paper on commuter and regional rail in the United States and abroad, using the Illinois Central/Metra Electric as a case study. Sandy spent his high school years in Chicago (West Rogers Park, to be exact), and his family still lives there. He blogs at Itinerant Urbanist and can be found on Twitter.

Not enough trains! I mean, that’s the really easy answer. The more complicated, broader one is that starting in the 1970s, and coincidental with greater public sector involvement in running the line, it was reenvisioned and transformed from a real rapid transit line to a “commuter” rail line.

And where there was once frequent operation all day, it became very specialized and focused on transporting suburban commuters on a nine-to-five schedule.

People in Chicago are sort of conditioned to think of the “L” and Metra as two 14 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

And what about the differences in fares with the “L”?

The fares were pretty comparable right up until 1969. When the Dan Ryan line (the South Side Red Line) opened, IC lost a lot of ridership and started to raise fares.

So, just to summarize: trains every ten minutes, which is roughly the same service as the Green Line today, and the same price as the “L”. That’s on the South Chicago branch, which runs close to the lake down to 93rd Street. What about the main

branch?

Ah, that’s where you see the priorities flipping. In 1946, the main line had service every forty minutes all day, plus additional peak service. In the 70s that increased to every thirty minutes all day, but since 1982 it’s been cut back to once an hour.

So you alluded to the fact that the Metra Electric lines were owned and operated by a private, for-profit company until relatively recently. Of course, the “L” lines were too, originally, but they switched over to public ownership earlier. How important is that fact?

That’s a good question. I think there was a lot more populist attention to the “surface” lines (streetcars, then buses), which were a huge source of political tension and even violence in Chicago, and the “L”, than there was to the “mainline” railroads that are today’s Metra lines. And a lot of that had to do with class dynamics that go back way further than we might think. The Illinois Central trains were seen as being for the rich as far back as the 1880s.

How did the IC come to be the public

I know the IC made a major push in the 1920s when they modernized and electrified the line to present it as high-class and luxurious, but the reputation goes back farther than that. I think some of the South Side neighborhoods the IC served were, at one point, among Chicago’s elite, though it’s hard to think of them that way now.

And one of the advantages of the IC was that it extended well past the end of the South Side ‘L” (today’s Green Line), reaching into areas that were perhaps colonized by wealthier folks more tolerant of a long commute in return for more rural living.

So if IC was the train for the elite, why has its service declined so precipitously?

Well, I think the “eliteness” declined a lot starting around the time it was electrified and modernized, actually. Those neighborhoods began to change.

Right. It was the 1960s when white flight really began in earnest in South Shore.

Was IC’s ridership ever mixed-race?

Unfortunately, I don’t have data on that.

Some of the 1970s planning documents imply that by the late 1960s it was largely black, which makes sense given that even some of the suburbs the IC served (Harvey, etc.) were and are heavily black.

And especially after the war, as in other places in Chicago, the racial transitions were incredibly rapid. So there was less incentive to preserve good service, because the people living in those neighborhoods didn’t have the same kind of voice. At the same time, the southern suburbs were exploding— everything from Homewood south. And those people did have a voice, and were vocal about reorienting service to fit their needs.

So ironically, the transition from private to public allowed the railroad’s governance to become captured by a smaller, whiter, richer group. Could you talk a little about the sort of institutions of governance that allowed that to happen?

Yes, I would argue that’s accurate.

“Commuter rail” has always been white and wealthy, but you’d think public ownership would mitigate that, and if anything it’s intensified the dynamic.

As for governance, I think you have

TRANSPORTATION to look at the Regional Transportation Authority as a really sadly dysfunctional institution. There really was a tension between the RTA and CTA from the very beginning, where they were competing for riders and funds rather than trying to create a system that worked together.

This isn’t a Chicago thing—it’s pretty common in American transit. But I think by the point the RTA was created, there was already a sense of there being “city” and “suburban” interests, and each needing to protect their own. The idea that some assets crossed that line didn’t really penetrate anyone’s heads.

You say the death blows to Metra Electric as rapid transit were dealt from 1979 to 1981.

Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t just Metra Electric— the RTA had this huge fiscal crisis in 1981, and they hiked fares across the board. I think they doubled within 1981 alone. And the schedules were cut to essentially what they are today, which is the really damaging thing.

They did recognize the special nature of Metra Electric and bring the fares way back down soon thereafter, but the damage was done.

There are several different organizing campaigns to get the South Chicago branch reconverted to rapid transit. What would people on the South Side gain from that, and what are the barriers to doing it?

I think that’s a really hopeful development, that people are really interested in that today.

The South Chicago branch is essentially a light rail line—it runs in the median of a city street! Service every two hours mid-day is absurd.

Let’s start with the barriers, then we can talk about the benefits. I think one of the biggest barriers is this dynamic of competition between Metra and the CTA. The beginning of the tailspin for the line was the opening of the Dan Ryan back in 1969, both because it took away a lot of traffic directly, and because a lot of South Side bus routes were restructured to exclusively serve the “L”.

But in the meantime, the CTA has, to their credit, developed some alternatives to the IC line that are pretty competitive. The express buses that use Lake Shore Drive are pretty time-competitive if traffic is decent, and the Jeffrey Jump bus runs frequently all day and has similar competitiveness.

CTA has zero incentive to help rehabilitate the Metra Electric line or feed

passengers to it if it’s competing with one of their proudest achievements. You see this very clearly in the South Lakeshore transit study they did in 2012—they totally sandbagged the option of restoring frequent service on the Metra Electric.

They claimed it wouldn’t be cost efficient.

You think they were wrong?

In a word, yes. There are a lot of problems with the study. You could start running more off-peak service tomorrow, with existing rolling stock, for zero capital cost. It wouldn’t be ideal, but you could do it. They said it would cost $350 million. And it uses CTA’s loading standards—which measure current ridership—to determine that there’s no need for more service, while not dealing with the fact that the line had four or five times more ridership historically [when it ran more frequently] than it does today.

activist attempts at making this happen have come from different perspectives.

Some have come from the black community, some from advocates like the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and some from business and university interests. And it’s kind of disjointed, and interests might not fully align. So I think there’s a lot of work left to do there in terms of getting everybody on the same page.

But there’s one thing to remember, which is that Metra Electric is the only example in the country of a mainline rail line that was once run as rapid transit, and

has since been reduced to commuter rail.

Bringing back frequent service is restoring past glory, not doing something new—and that’s what I think the political messaging should be. Metra Electric is special, and it doesn’t fit into the paradigm that RTA and Metra have tried to fit it into for the last thirty-five years. This interview is republished from The Chicago Dispatch, an online magazine of interviews, essays, and creative work about Chicago, edited by Daniel Kay Hertz.

So what about the benefits of actually doing the conversion?

The most obvious benefit is that bringing back rapid transit-style service could save a lot of people a lot of time. Right now, if you don’t have access to the J14 or one of the Lake Shore Drive buses, you have to slog over to the Red Line or the Green Line on a local bus. And we know how slow those can be. It would also be an immense benefit to the University of Chicago, which currently doesn’t have a rapid transit link.

And thinking beyond the South Chicago branch—restoring rapid transit on the Metra Electric main line would likely mean there’s no need to build the Red Line extension to 130th, which would save a billion dollars or two in capital costs. In other words, whatever investment you make in Metra Electric, if it avoids building the Red Line extension, it’s already paid for itself.

I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a building boom in South Shore if frequent service comes back. It probably wouldn’t be as aggressive as it has been in some places— black Chicago neighborhoods don’t really gentrify along the same lines as others—but that’s something to be considered, and won’t be popular with some people.

So given everything, do you see the Metra Electric reclaiming its old glory as a true rapid transit service?

I think it could. There’s a lot of momentum in that direction, and the logic is kind of selfevident. One thing that I find encouraging, but that will take work, is that the various

COURTESY OF THE CHICAGO DISPATCH

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 15

MUSIC

In Her Own Words On Jamila Woods’s “HEAVN”

BY F. AMANDA TUGADE

I

’m not ready to write about this album because I’m not ready to come to terms with myself.

I’m a brown girl—that should identify as yellow—stuck in a bubble where I’ve often fallen into a routine of being still, being silent when it came to explaining myself to those who only see me as “other.”

It’s a label I’ve rejected, but it’s one I’ve inevitably grown accustomed to.

But Jamila Woods isn’t buying my story anymore. Without apology, she burst my bubble to show me a glimpse of HEAVN, her thirteen-track debut album released July 11 for free via SoundCloud.

I hear hints of my mother’s critical voice in her songs; she has lived this life longer than I have. She moves with skepticism. She knows me and the secrets I’ve yet to tell my best friend or even fully admit to myself.

Throughout the album, the Chicago singer picks, plucks, and places her frustrations and her fears inside carefully measured beats and bridges that leave no room for others to respond or to question that Woods is in search of—in dire need of—space.

She, too, lived in her own “Bubbles,” crooning “they call you shy / always ask why you listen before you speak.” She points to her hair, to her oils, and to the color of her skin as signs of her blackness, of her reality.

16 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

Woods plays with the names of her favorite places as if they were toys neatly sorted and stored on a bookcase in her bedroom. She speaks at the end of the album’s self-titled song “HEAVN” and on “VRY BLK” to talk of Belmont Avenue and to recall the Rockin’ Robin rhyme.

The Closed Session signee keeps a

HEAVN exists in a politically and socially charged America. It lives in the wake of a hot, humid midsummer month that is forced to inhale intolerance and subjected to exhale protests for peace. It appears in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, which carves out spaces for black people to demand respect, love, and justice, to protect

“If I say that I can’t breathe / Will I become a chalk line?”

Chicago-centered state of mind and enlists the help of labelmates Kweku Collins and oddCouple, as well as Chance the Rapper and The Social Experiment’s musical director Peter Cottontale. In “LSD,” she and Chance draw from a distant memory, traveling across the city and seeing the Chicago skyline peek over Lake Shore Drive. It’s clear that Woods has a knack for storytelling; it seems like a way for her to cope, and the stories in the album feel as though she, too, is finally coming to terms with herself as she tells them.

their bodies from all harm. Woods leaves a trail of “Breadcrumbs” to guide her back to a “love that doesn’t want me to change my appearance for a family barbecue.”

Cloaked in black magic, she looks to fellow South Side rapper Noname (formerly Noname Gypsy) on “VRY BLK,” and “Blk Girl Soldier” gives a nod to freedom fighters Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth, Angela Davis, and Assata Shakur, and what they taught her (“Call it black girl magic / Yeah she scares the gov’ment / Deja Vu of Tubman”). The spirit of activism is alive in those two songs.

While she reaches for comfort in the chorus (“I’m very black, black, black / Can’t send me back, back, back / You take my brother, brother, brother / I fight back, back, back”), she still expresses fear. “If I say that I can’t breathe / Will I become a chalk line?”

Throughout the album, Woods’s voice remains steady but soft. Every now and then, it crescendoes to prove her points—as if she goes the extra length to remind herself to not give up, to move forward, and to always have hope. She imagines herself as an alien in “Stellar,” looking for an “inner space”: “Can’t find my home / I wanna go to my private planet I’ve been dreaming of.” Freely, she strums the pain of black people, of black women, of people of color; she’s read all of our diaries out loud. She knows our prayers by heart.

On the album cover, half of her body is submerged in water. She is floating, glowing underneath a picturesque pink, orange, and blue sky. Her eyes are sleepy. Her hair is styled in two top knots and two long, skinny braids, and her arms are stretched out just to complete the lines of symmetry. Perhaps she has found her heaven, and she is waiting for me—us—while repeating this promise: “I don’t wanna wait for my life to be over to let myself feel the way I feel / I don’t wanna wait for our lives to be over to love myself however I feel.” ¬

EVENTS

COLUMN

Notes from the White Rhino For Fred Castillo, being a barber is about more than cutting hair

F

Ray Salazar

red Castillo knows that when a man walks out of a barbershop, “most of the time, you feel like a million bucks.” While Fred feels proud of his work, he also sees that it’s about more than cutting hair. “It’s about building a friendship,” Fred explains. “At the barbershop, you develop a bond with the person you see every couple of weeks.”

I met Fred about seven years ago when I walked into a Southwest Side barbershop trying to get a cut and beard line up before Thanksgiving. I didn't have an appointment; the place was packed. By chance, I sat in Fred's chair. And I've followed him as he's moved to at least five barbershops. Fred is good at what he does.

Fred decided to open his own shop over a year ago in Lyons and then Burbank, both shops right outside of Chicago.

After leasing these two spots, Fred chose to open 312 Men’s Barbershop on Pershing Road near Oak Park Avenue in Stickney, minutes from Chicago’s Southwest Side.

This location, next to a few other small businesses, caught his eye a few years ago. In the spring of 2016, Fred opened the doors to the barbershop he’s wanted for a long time.

“It’s something old-fashioned but new at the same time,” Fred says. While the shop’s design is industrial, with metallic finishes and caged lighting, classic elements make up the essence of Fred’s shop. A metal sign he got from an old, now-closed barbershop, one that Fred remembers as a kid, hangs near his station. A barber pole from the 1920s stands near the entrance.

Mirrors, some framed with rugged wood, hang above metal cabinets at each station. Black and classically sleek upholstered sofas with elegantly buttoned high backs—custom-made—sit near the large-screen TV adorned with custom artwork.

But the most impressive pieces of furniture are the chairs.

The refurbished Koken chairs—with most of the work done by Fred—date back to the early 1900s. Koken chairs, with their hydraulic lifts, revolutionized the barber shop experience when they first appeared. Before that, barbers had to lift, push down, or spin a chair to adjust it.

Fred started investing in and refurbishing these classic chairs a few years ago. “I wanted to open a business and wanted a nice chair. I didn’t know how to work the chairs. There was that bit of negativity. What if it breaks down? Nobody knows how to fix the chairs,” Fred remembers. “So I gambled my chances, and I took it apart. It took me six months to put it back together. I

got the concept of how everything works.” Fred gets the chrome restored and the cushioned seats re-upholstered. He assembles the chairs himself.

At first, Fred just wanted a Koken chair for his station.

“But,” he reflects, “I’m the type of person who wants to do things as a team. If I’m going to do something nice for me, I’m going to do something nice for others, too.” Fred’s barbershop is home to eight of these classic chairs. There’s even a small one for toddlers.

Fred emphasizes that at his shop it’s all about the customer—how they’re greeted, how they’re treated.

While he’ll give almost any barber the benefit of the doubt when they contact him about renting a chair, Fred ensures he surrounds himself with a good team. “I’ve worked with good teams where everything is positive and there’s a good flow,” Fred asserts. “When there’s not, it gets boring.”

For over seventeen years, twenty-nine-year-old Fred has been cutting hair. “When I started, I was a kid,” Fred remembers.

“I was twelve years old. At that time, the barber industry was growing. All the good barbers we knew about were up north.

My parents would never take me up there. I ended up looking at people’s haircuts and just copying them. I just guessed.”

Fred’s mom owned a pair of clippers when they lived in Cicero, where he grew up. He says that she used to give him “a quick buzz” once in awhile. He recalls that he would get a haircut once a year. “I looked like one of the Beatles,” Fred jokes. “I got tired of waiting for a haircut. So I grabbed a pair of clippers and tried it on myself. I messed up myself a couple of times. I eventually got the hang of it.”

One time, a week before Fred started fourth grade, his father took him to a barbershop. But Fred didn’t like the cut.

So he grabbed some shears and took some off the top. By the time he was done, Fred says he liked the new haircut. His mom reacted: “Oh, who cut your hair?” That’s how Fred knew she didn’t like it.

Soon, friends began asking for a haircut. Fred says, “Then I’d do it and charge $2.00. We’re talking about when I was in seventh or eighth grade.” Eventually, though, it paid off: Illinois has the highest-paid barbers in the country, according to a 2015 report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2005, when Fred was seventeen, a new barbershop finally opened around his house. Through a friend who went in for a clean-up, Fred got a call from the owner who was looking for barbers. “I was surprised because this wasn't what I was planning to do as a career,” Fred says. “But I liked taking care of my friends.” Fred quit his part-time job at a retirement home and started working full-time as a barber and earned his barber license. When he was enrolled in classes, the instructor chose Fred to teach others how to cut hair.

Fred works from 8am until past midnight sometimes because of his large client base. Around the holidays, a fella has to make an appointment days in advance.

At the barbershop, whether someone rents the chair or whether they’re the shop owner, Fred explains, “You’re your own man. You make your own decisions. But you gotta work!”

Fred feels proud of his new shop. But he’s not done. Fred says he’ll continue to work for another shop, maybe one inside of his own building. “I want to leave a nice story,” Fred explains.

“My shop is a place where you can go, get a haircut, and treat each other with respect.”

ILLUSTRATION BY JAVIER SUAREZ

BULLETIN Community Possible | Englewood 823 W. 63rd St. Wednesday, July 20, noon– 7pm. Free. RSVP at bit.ly/29SUFak. (773) 651-2400. greaterenglewoodcdc.org Come to the 63rd Street Farmers Market to join Greater Englewood Community Development Corporation and U.S. Banks Community Possible and discover all the ways in which Englewood can grow! Take part in a combination of fun events and opportunities to share ideas. RSVP to enter a raffle. (Anne Li)

Great Migration Blues Trail Buddy Guy’s Legends Blues Lounge, 700 S. Wabash Ave. July 22–August 11. Daily, 10am. $60. Purchase tickets at bit. ly/29N1e0s. (866) 346-7664. aprpullmanportermuseum.org Travel on Chicago’s Great Migration Trail tour, from historic Bronzeville to the Pullman National Monument. Explore the destinations that became home to the half million people who migrated to Chicago from the Deep South, and immerse yourself in the history of blues. (Adia Robinson)

A March to End Rape Culture Congress St. and Michigan Ave. Sunday, July 24, 1pm. Free. bit.ly/29ZepIn Join Chicago-based feminist organization FURIE in its second annual rally to end rape culture and gender-based violence. Formerly known as “Slutwalk,” the re-named event will kickoff as a rally and speak-out in Grant Park before turning into a march through downtown. The organizers welcome attendees to share their stories and make their voices heard. (Emily Lipstein)

Keeping Government Accountable for Clean, Safe Water Bilandic Building, 160 N. LaSalle St., Room C500. Wednesday, July 27, noon–1:30pm.

RSVP at bit.ly/illinoiscleanwater. Free. (312) 436-1274. ilcampaign.org In the wake of the environmental crisis in Flint, Michigan, a growing number of CPS schools are finding unacceptable levels of lead in their drinking water. Panelists inJULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 17

EVENTS clude reporters for WBEZ and the Tribune, legal experts, and a physician-attorney-toxicologist; they will answer questions about clean, safe water in Illinois and how experts are keeping officials accountable. (Emily Lipstein)

History of Black Activism in Chicago Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Wednesday, July 27, 5:30pm–8pm. Free.

(773) 702-2388. bmrc.lib.uchicago.edu This presentation, hosted by the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, will feature research from BMRC scholars. Topics include activism in Chicago’s African migrant community, and black women’s contributions to both Harold Washington’s Mayoral Campaign and grassroots health activism in the city. (Anne Li)

VISUAL ARTS Islamic Art and the Art Institute: A Century of Exhibitions and Acquisitions Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave. Tuesday, July 19 through Monday, September 26.

Monday–Wednesday, 1pm–5pm; Thursday 10:30am–8pm; Friday 1pm–5pm. $25. (312) 443-3600. artic.edu From antiquarian books to jewel-encrusted prints, this exhibition peeks into the last century of the Art Institute’s displays on Islamic art and culture. Intriguing archival documents and photographs will track exhibitions over time, including collections like the popular Antique Oriental Rugs of 1947, and those dating back to the 1890s.

(Isabelle Lim)

Petcoke: Tracing Dirty Energy Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave. Opening Reception Thursday, July 21, 5pm–7pm. Through Sunday, October 9. Free. (312) 663-5554. mocp.org This exhibition explores the little-known impact of petcoke, a dust-like waste product of oil refining processes in the Chicago region. Through photography, video, sculpture, and interactive maps, the exhibition marries environmental awareness and art. Featuring work by Rozalinda Borcila, Terry Evans, and Brian Holmes, 18 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY ¬ JULY 20, 2016

among others. (Isabelle Lim)

Summer Saturday: Art Bike Ride Meet at Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave. Saturday, July 23. 10:30am– 1pm. Free. (773) 324-5520. hydeparkart.org As part of the Center’s Summer Saturday series, this biking art tour—led by Erika Dudley and Patric McCoy—explores public art in Kenwood and South Bronzeville. With periodic stops steeped in history and culture, pedal for as long as your legs can hold up. (Isabelle Lim)

Archival Workshop: Preserving the Riches of One’s Legacy The DuSable Museum of African American History, Ames Auditorium, 740 E. 56th Place.

Saturday, July 23, 2pm–4pm. Free with museum admission of $10. (773) 947-0600. dusablemuseum.org Learn to preserve beloved family keepsakes so that they may be cherished through generations to come. Professionals will teach workshop-goers to protect, organize, and maintain personal collections of photographs, digital files, and other artifacts. (Sara Cohen)

Ode to the City Mixed Media Workshop Series Dorchester Art + Housing Collaborative, 1450 E. 70th St. Saturdays, 1pm– 3pm. Through August 27. Free. (708) 655-5348. See full calendar and register at odetothecity.org The range of poets, artists, and creators teaching this workshop series will be sure to inspire you to make something of your own. Ode to the City is a grassroots arts initiative targeting communities with stories to tell and art to create. All are welcome—bring family and friends. (Baci Weiler)

Pet Portrait Slam Bridgeport Art Center Sculpture Garden, 1200 W. 35th St. Sunday, July 31, noon–4pm.

(773) 940-2992. projectonward.org Project Onward, a gifted team of fifty upand-coming community artists with mental and developmental disabilities, presents a day of outdoor pet appreciation. Bring pets along or have their photo at the ready to receive a personalized portrait to treasure.

(Sara Cohen)

MUSIC Matthew Skoller at Buddy Guy’s Legends

at 5pm so everyone can get to their actual bedrooms at a reasonable hour. ( Jake Bittle)

Lucy Dacus with Daughter

Buddy Guy’s Legends, 700 S. Wabash Ave. Thursday, July 21, 9:30pm. $10. 21+. (312) 427-1190. buddyguy.com

Thalia Hall, 1807 S. Allport St. Wednesday, July 27. Doors 8pm, show 9pm. $26 standing room, $36 seats. 17+. (312) 526-3851. thaliahallchicago.com

It’s no shock that Matthew Skoller is performing at Buddy Guy’s Legends on Thursday—he’s been appearing there, alone and with his band, since the venue opened.

It was twenty-seven years ago when Skiller first graced the Buddy Guy’s stage, but since then his prowess with the blues harmonica has itself become legendary, and he’s taken his passionate harp blowing all over the world. For blues fans, this is a great opportunity to see a master at his longtime stomping ground. (Olivia Stovicek)

Cool off with these chill indie bands at WXRT’s official Lollapalooza aftershow.

Opening band Daughter is no stranger to Chicago, having opened for The National here in 2014. While Richmond-based Lucy Dacus has only been around since 2015, she’s embarking on a cross-country tour to celebrate the release of her debut album.

Listeners should be ready for emotional lyrics that, ever so quietly, pack a punch.

(Emily Lipstein)

The Stylistics Revue The Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave Friday, July 22. Doors 7pm, show 8pm. $15.

(312) 801-2100. promontorychicago.com Back in the seventies, the Stylistics were one of the most popular groups within Philly soul, the lush genre that birthed the careers of Teddy Pendergrass, Patti Labelle, and disco. Come hear the now-quartet perform (sans some original members) hits like “Betcha by Golly, Wow” and “You Are Everything.” (Christian Belanger)

MAD Science at the Dojo The Dojo. Saturday, July 23, 8pm–midnight. $5 at the door. facebook.com/thedojochi (message for address on day of show). thedojochi@ gmail.com In collaboration with AMFM Magazine, the DIY venue the Dojo presents a six-band lineup with acts ranging from funk-inspired hip-hop to lo-fi rock to spoken word poetry. The impetus for the blowout show is, apparently, that, “Everyone has been contaminated by toxic glow in the dark serum that inspires people to uncontrollably turn up!” ( Jake Bittle)

Thanks for Coming @ Fat City Fat City, 3147 S. Morgan Ave. Sunday, July 24, 5pm. facebook.com/fatcityonmorgan Three bedroom folk acts will perform at a Bridgeport venue-studio-workshop, with New York-based act Thanks for Coming (check out “i just want to get high & die” and “i don’t want to do my homework ep”) at the top of the bill. The show will start

Tory Lanez Reggies, 2105 S. State St. Monday, July 29, 10pm. $20. 18+. (312) 949-0120. reggieslive. com Tory Lanez, the Toronto rapper who sometimes goes by the much better moniker Argentina Fargo (as in the bank, not the North Dakota city), is coming to Chicago.

To get a quick taste of the sugary hooks in store, watch the strangely compelling, highly dramatic video for “Say It,” his biggest hit to date. (Christian Belanger)

STAGE & SCREEN Eyes on the Rainbow: A Film with Assata Shakur Pop Up JUST Art Gallery, 729 W. Maxwell St. Wednesday, July 20, 6pm–8pm. Free.

RSVP online. (312) 355-5922. sji.uic.edu Since Assata Shakur escaped prison, where she was sent after her conviction for killing a New Jersey state trooper, the former Black Panther has lived in Havana, Cuba, which accepted her as a political refugee. Hear about the life and ideas of the first woman to be listed on the FBI’s most-wanted list at this feature film, one of a series on Cuba. (Adam Thorp)

Shakespeare in the Park: Twelfth Night Tuley Park, 501 E. 90th Pl., Thursday, July 21, 6:30pm. Gage Park, 2411 W. 55th St., Wednesday, July 27, 6:30pm. Washington Park, 5531 S. Russell Dr., Friday, July 29, 6:30pm. Free.

(312) 595-5600. chicagoshakes.com

EVENTS “If music be the food of love, play on,” Duke Orsino extols in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. This traveling tour of the play, part of a celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, establishes that appreciation of the playwright’s work continues. (Adam Thorp)

cated group of female Cuban educators in Maestra, and experience the “lectores” of nineteenth-century cigar workers in With the Stroke of a Chaveta. (Sara Cohen)

BCH@BING: Summer of Spike: Get on the Bus

BING Art Books, 305 E. Garfield Blvd.

Thursday, July 28, 7pm. Free. (312) 8575561. rebuild-foundation.org

BING Art Books, 305 E. Garfield Blvd.

Thursday, July 21, 7pm–10pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org There’s still time to catch the last couple weeks of Black Cinema House’s Spike Lee screening series. Third in line, Get on the Bus is Lee’s immortalization of the inaugural Million Man March that took place in 1995: a major gathering of black men in Washington, D.C with a mission to bring politicians’ attention to the plight of urban communities. (Bridget Gamble)

Movies Under the Stars: Our Lives at Work Archive House, 6918 S. Dorchester Ave. Friday, July 22, 9pm–11pm. Free. (312) 8575561. rebuild-foundation.org Black Cinema House hosts an outdoor screening in partnership with Chicago Film Archives of a series of short films about work and workers. Loretta Smith, the director of a piece about a bathroom attendant’s life and work, will discuss her film after the screening. (Adam Thorp)

Kiarostami filmfront, 1740 W. 18th St. Friday, July 22, 8pm. Free. filmfront.org Prolific Iranian director, writer, and producer Abbas Kiarostami braved political turmoil in his home country to create cinematic masterpieces portraying raw and intricate depictions of humanity. Commemorating his recent passing, filmfront plans to screen one of his internationally recognized films—come by to find out which one. (Sara Cohen)

Holá Cuba! Shorts Night Pop Up JUST Art Gallery, 729 W. Maxwell St. Wednesday, July 27, 6pm–8pm. Free.

RSVP online. (312) 355-5922. sji.uic.edu Shorts Night, part of the documentary film series Holá Cuba!, will shine light on the crusaders of historical literacy campaigns in the Caribbean nation. Follow a dedi-

BCH@BING: Summer of Spike: Jungle Fever

Throughout the month, Black Cinema House is screening four films by Spike Lee in a series at BING. Last but not least, see the iconic director’s nineties exploration of interracial dating, Jungle Fever, which celebrates its twenty-fifth birthday this year.

(Bridget Gamble)

Silverhead filmfront, 1740 W. 18th St. Friday, July 29, 8pm. filmfront.org Though it’s only July, the Pilsen cine-club is helping patrons shift into a Halloween state of mind with Silverhead, a 2016 movie about an ax murderer who relocates to the South Side of Chicago, where he continues his murderous spree and finds himself being watched by a strange man. Filmmaker Lewis Vaughn is to be in attendance.

(Bridget Gamble)

Black Cycle South Side Community Arts Center, 3831 S. Michigan Ave. Monday, August 1, 6:30pm.

Free. (773) 373-1026. sscartcenter.org From Court Theatre’s Spotlight Reading Series, which stages readings of overlooked plays from playwrights of color, comes Cheryl Lynn Bruce’s adaptation of Martie Charles’s Black Cycle. The drama follows beauty salon owner Vera as she faces the challenges of motherhood. (Sara Cohen)

LIT John Koethe and David Trinidad at the Co-op Seminary Co-op Bookstore, 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave. Thursday, July 21, 6pm. Free.

RSVP online. (773) 752-4381. semcoop.com This double-header reading will feature two accomplished poets reading from their latest collections. They are John Koethe, a Wisconsin-based philosophy professor whose work has been described by Jorie Graham as “poetry of magnificent under-

tow,” and David Trinidad, a poet known for his deft explorations of pop culture and city life who is also a professor of creative writing at Columbia College. ( Jake Bittle)

Reading the Black Library: South Side Storytelling Stony Island Arts Bank, 6760 S. Stony Island Ave. Tuesday, July 26, 6pm–7pm. Free. (312) 857-5561. rebuild-foundation.org There’s barely space in this blurb for the star-studded roster of this panel on black storytelling in Chicago, presented in the Arts Bank’s Johnson Publishing Library: incisive poet Nate Marshall, intrepid WBEZ journalist Natalie Moore, and hip-hop renaissance man Rhymefest, moderated by scholar, writer, and artist (and long-ago Weekly alumna) Eve Ewing. ( Jake Bittle)

The Lit Issue

Harry Potter Midnight Release Party 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th St. Saturday, July 30, 8pm–Sunday, July 31, 12am. Free.

(773) 684-1300. semcoop.com For a few magical, anomalous nights in the early aughts, bookstores all across the country stayed open late. Recapture those days, and their requisite wand-making workshops, costume contests, and trivia games, with the release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the official script book of a play featuring Harry Potter as an overworked Ministry of Magic stiff, with a job and kids, just like you. (Lewis Page)

Ode to the City Poetry Workshop Series Bing Art Books, 307 E. Garfield Blvd. Tuesdays, 6pm–8pm. Through August 30. Free.

(708) 655-5348. See full calendar and register at odetothecity.org Bring a pen, paper, and your voice to this free workshop series, offered by Ode to the City and taught by professional poets. Ode to the City is a grassroots arts initiative targeting communities with stories to tell and art to create. All are welcome—bring family and friends, too. (Baci Weiler)

FINAL DEADLINE Saturday, July 23 Please send your poems, stories, essays, and art to

editor@ southsideweekly. com COMING 8/3/16

JULY 20, 2016 ¬ SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY 19